Specificity principle series#

The cue words facilitated recall when present in the input and output of memorising and recalling the words. In 1968 Tulving and Osler made participants memorise a list of 24 tbr words in the absence or presence of cue words. This started a lot of research into lists of to-be-remembered (tbr) words, and cues that helped them. This is because we look for any connection that helps us combine items into meaningful units. This principle plays a significant role in both the concept of context-dependent memory and the concept of state-dependent memory.Įxamples of the use of the encoding specificity principle include studying in the same room as an exam is taken and the recall of information when intoxicated being easier when intoxicated again.Įbbinghaus, a pioneer of research into memory, noted that associations between items aids recall of information thus the internal context of a list matters. The context may refer to the context in which the information was encoded, the physical location or surroundings, as well as the mental or physical state of the individual at the time of encoding.

Specificity principle series#

A series of psychological experiments were undertaken in the 1970s which continued this work and further showed that context affects our ability to recall information. This conclusion was drawn from a recognition-memory task. The accessibility is governed by retrieval cues, these cues are dependent on the encoding pattern the specific encoding pattern may vary from instance to instance, even if nominally the item is the same, as encoding depends on the context.

When a person uses information stored in their memory it is necessary that the information is accessible. It was introduced by Thomson and Tulving who suggested that contextual information is encoded with memories which affect the retrieval process. It provides a framework for understanding how the conditions present while encoding information relate to memory and recall of that information. The encoding specificity principle is the general principle that matching the encoding contexts of information at recall assists in the retrieval of episodic memories.